Short Stuff
by Baroqy
Summary: Dean tries to deal with his new life.


**Synopsis**: Dean tries to deal with his new life.

**Disclaimer**: I am renting Dean and Sam because I don't own them and never will. I promise to return any Supernatural characters by the due date or incur an additional rental fee as stipulated in the terms & conditions. Damaging any Supernatural characters by trying to squeeze them through the return slot when the red light is still on will incur an additional fee.

**Notes**: Right after the S5 finale, I started to write an epic S6 story. Only shortly thereafter I was offered a very nice job in a different country. Moving to another country completely flushed my writing plans down the toilet (and I'm a very slow writer anyway).

Consequently the story has been broken up into separate little 'slice of life' posts because at this rate my ideas will be completely useless S6 starts. Expect a few more things over the next couple of weeks.

/SN\\

Dean's slip of the tongue happens two months and five days after he arrives on Lisa Braden's doorstep.

He's making Ben's school lunch and he asks Ben what he wants on his sandwiches. Only it doesn't come out as expected.

"Hey Sammy, do you want the usual PB & J?"

Ben isn't fazed by this but he does point out, in his straight forward 12-year old manner, that his name is Ben. Not Sammy.

Dean doesn't realize what he's done until he hears the name repeated by Ben. His heart starts beating too quickly and he can feel it trying to hammer its way out of his chest and any second he's finally going to die of that all-consuming grief that threatens to overwhelm him on a daily basis. He takes a few seconds to get himself under control by concentrating on cutting up the sandwiches. Dean has always been the master of hiding his emotions so the brief lapse in conversation is barely noticed.

"Sorry kiddo. Don't know what I was thinking," says Dean.

"That's okay," says Ben and the exchange is quickly forgotten.

Dean spends the remaining time before the arrival of the school bus carefully wrapping the sandwiches in Saran and shoving them into a paper bag. Ben always looks kind of horrified by the entire process.

"I can't see why I can't buy my lunch like the other kids," Ben complains on numerous occasions.

"Because you'll just end up stuffing your face with fries and pizza," replies Lisa. Dean backs her up whenever she makes that statement but he's not unsympathetic. He spent his entire childhood and most of his adult life surviving on fare that came out of deep fryers or vending machines. It's just that he senses if he used the It Never Did Me Any Harm argument it would pretty much fall on deaf ears.

Ben grabs the bag, shoves it into his backpack, gives Dean a perfunctionary good-bye and then runs off. Dean has no doubt that the contents of the bag will be traded or thrown away at some point in the day.

And with that he's alone again. Lisa went to her office job thirty minutes ago and with Ben gone he's left to occupy his time. He opens the local paper, starts circling the few jobs that are available for a man with a GED and an extremely patchy employment history. He's determined to earn his keep in some way because he hates the thought of being a freeloader. A job seems the most practical way to do it and he'd take anything but even anything seems to have vanished from the new economic landscape. With nothing much else to do he devotes himself to being useful in the only other way he knows how, apart from ganking all things supernatural.

The house has never been more maintained in its life. Gutters are cleaned, squeaky floors unsqueaked, holes patched, paint work touched up, garden weeded and lawns mowed. The stuff he's not entirely sure about he looks up online and then goes about doing them. He soon figures out how to use a vacuum cleaner, iron a shirt, load the dishwasher and clean soap scum from the shower doors.

Outsiders may have observed that Dean is getting a little obsessive in his drive to be of use, and drunker men may have tittered something unkind about being whipped but these things never occur to Dean. He can't screw this up; he made a promise to Sam. And even though he tries very, very hard to never think of Sam there's always the underlying litany that drives him during the day.

_Sam told you to get an apple pie life. He made you promise. _

For Dean, a promise is a promise, unless it's a deal made with the supernatural. A promise made between human beings is binding. You can never go back on a promise, break a promise or try to wriggle out of it. Dean is like an overly devoted Jack Russell terrier who will stick to his promise even if it gets him killed.

He goes about his daily self-imposed routine of making beds, cleaning the bathroom, vacuuming, mopping floors and dusting. Unfortunately he's running out of things to clean so that means after an hour he's left to entertain himself. He's been watching a lot of TV lately but it's beginning to bore him and worse, it ceases to distract him. He took up running about three weeks after arriving. It seems like a pointless activity on the whole, but it keeps him fit and focuses his mind on nothing more than the pounding of his shoes on the pavement. He never contemplated sticking his feet in a pair of Nikes during his lifetime. It's a surprise to find out they're comfortable.

All of this focuses down to one thing. Distraction. Drinking used to be effective but Lisa is unimpressed by his drinking habits. He's been told not to drink in front of Ben, and not to bother coming back to the house if he's drunk. So that leaves him desperate for other activities that don't involve being friends with a bottle of booze or hunting. When he's distracted he doesn't have time to think of Sam. That Sam is gone and not coming back. That Sam is down in hell experiencing all of the things Dean experienced.

It brings him to the brink of a panic attack at the thought, so he avoids the thought at all costs.

He decides that he'll work on his resume, such as it is. Lisa lets him use the laptop and he's been diligently trying to write something but it's about half a page long and looks sparse in a way that screams 'unemployed drifter'. The websites advise not lying about long gaps and providing a suitable explanation. Most of the examples use the word, 'homemaker'. None of the examples use phrases like 'spent time in hell' or 'hunted a wide variety of supernatural beings with a focus on cost effective methods of elimination'.

He stops working on the resume about three minutes later. The Impala sits in the garage and he debates about cleaning her again, or maybe checking under the hood but there's only so many times that he can clean an already clean car or maintain an already well maintained car. After a while it's a sliding scale of starting to do more harm than good. He's tempted to take her out for a spin but there's just something about the Impala that doesn't gel with his new life. Or more to the point every time he tries to drive her he gets an image of Sam sitting next to him. There's an ass dent where Sam usually sat and there's the toy solider still wedged in the ash tray and every time Dean gets into the Impala it breaks Dean's heart.

Dean has no intention of acknowledging this directly. He just stuffs it back inside, like he always does.

Walking for a few miles in an aimless direction starts to hold appeal. Just as he gets up from the kitchen table, his cell phone starts playing his AC/DC ring tone.

It's the ring tone he assigned to Lisa and Ben. It's probably going to be Lisa because she's the only person who calls his phone. Bobby used to call but Dean could never seem to bring himself to have a direct conversation with the man, so Bobby has stopped trying and word has reached other hunters that Dean is out of the game.

"Hey," says Dean.

"Dean, can you come and get me?"

It's not Lisa. It's a young voice that sounds very upset.

"What's wrong?" says Dean.

"I got in trouble at school and I don't wanna tell Mom," says Ben.

"Okay kiddo, hang tight. I'm coming down right away."

The voice on the other end turns into a whisper and slightly conspiratorial. "I might have told them that you were my Dad. 'Cause only parents are supposed to come down to the office."

Dean is simultaneously happy and frightened by the term. "Don't worry about it. I'm coming down right now. Hang tight."

It's hardly a massive rescue mission involving physical danger but something in Dean automatically takes over. He grabs the keys to the Impala, his backpack with the house keys and money and rock salt and he's off.

/SN\\

Ben has punched another kid right in the nose. The other kid, Gregory Hewson, is already five feet and nine inches high and has school bully written all over him. Ben sports a cut lip and a massive bruise on his cheek.

Dean makes as nice as he can in the principal's office and wings it from his school days of covering for John Winchester's absences. He apologizes, says that Ben has an advanced moral outlook for a kid of his age and gets upset whenever he sees an injustice. Ben will never do it again, and please don't suspend him.

It's a first infraction and it seems the principal is inclined to let Ben off semi-lightly due to his sterling school reports and Gregory's already well known reputation.

After things swing favourably in Ben's direction, Ben is asked to wait outside the office and Dean gets subjected to a well-meaning lecture about how having an adult male figure in the household may be causing Ben to act out due to stress. The principal tells Dean to take Ben home for the rest of the day and the Ben has detention for a week.

Dean chews the inside of his mouth to prevent himself saying anything that would be considered impolite in polite company.

He thanks the principal for the advice and skedaddles.

Ben sits in the hallway and Dean tugs him by the jacket and they set off down the corridor and out into the car park.

Dean unlocks the car; Ben climbs into the passenger seat. Dean goes to start the car and glances over and oh, Dear Lord, it's Sam again. Ben looks just like Sam. _ Just like Sam at twelve. _

And that's when it hits Dean that when he thinks of Sam, he always thinks of him as a twelve-year old. Short and squeaky voiced and smart. When Sam was an adult sometimes Dean would find himself startled by the disconnect between the two Sams. Sam as a child and Sam as a grown-up. The Sam he adored and the Sam he still loved but struggled to understand.

Ben is Sam all over again and it hurts. It hurts so bad that he can feel his eyes misting over even though he's fighting to keep himself under control.

His passenger is wide eyed and embarrassed for both of them. "Why are you crying?"

Dean wipes at his eyes, tries to pretend his moment of weakness didn't happen. "I was just thinking of someone."

"Is it Sam?" Asks Ben.

He's not a dumb kid and he remembers Sam from the rescue mission in the housing subdivision. He knows that only Dean showed up at their door, and not Sam. He's probably overheard the conversations between Lisa and Dean. So no, Ben is not stupid and he can put enough clues together to make an educated guess.

There's no use denying it. "Yeah. It's Sam."

"What happened to him?"

"Long story kiddo," says Dean.

"Is he dead?"

"Might as well be," replies Dean before he can censor himself. He pauses before trying again. "Yeah. He's dead."

"Is that why you came to live at our house?"

Dean wants to tell Ben to quit it with the questions but he can't and Ben deserves to know as much as anyone.

He nods, grips the steering wheel. "Yeah, that's why I came to your house. I didn't have anywhere else to go. And I missed you guys."

"Okay. Cool."

"So you're cool with it?"

"Yeah," says Ben. He shrugs. "It's good having someone around. Other kids have Dads to hang around with and teach them things like how to throw a football."

Dean's heart clenches a little because he remembers teaching Sam all of those things for the same reason. Their father was absent on a frequent basis, both physically and emotionally.

"I can teach you football, baseball and how to shoot hoops," says Dean. He doesn't add that later on he can teach Ben how to play poker and a mean game of pool and how to pick up girls.

Ben brightens considerably at the news. "What'll we do now?"

Dean glances at his watch. It's just hitting midday.

"You want lunch? We can get ice cream and that should soften the blow before your mother starts yelling at us and we're grounded."

"Awesome!" Ben throws himself at Dean and gives him a quick hug before sliding back into the large dent in the seat.

Dean smiles and starts the car. He glances over at the passenger side again and he feels like he should be yelling for joy too because it's like he has Sam back. His baby brother. He feels like crying again because it seems so wrong.

It occurs to him on the drive to the local diner that he's like a father who lost his child and every child he sees walking past him could have been his, if only the circumstances had been different. That maybe that's how his own little girl or little boy would have grown up.

He wonders if it ever stops hurting. He wonders if Ben is his second chance. A chance to watch Ben grow up and have an ordinary life. An ordinary life untainted by evil and an inescapable destiny.

He really hopes so.

**The End.**


End file.
